Albright Quarry, MT Black Powder Explosion, Aug 1908

POWDER IS IGNITED IN SOME WAY UNKNOWN AND FOUR OF WORKMEN ARE BURIED UNDER MANY TONS OF ROCK -- BODIES NOT RECOVERED -- ANOTHER HIT BY FLYING ROCK IS PROBABLY DYING -- SPECIAL TRAIN TAKES INJURED TO HOSPITAL -- NEARLY ALL ARE FOREIGN BORN.

Great Falls, Aug. 10 -- Five men are dead and another is probably dying as the result of an explosion that occurred today at the Albright quarries, about 40 miles south of Great Falls, on the Neihart branch of the Montana Central, where lime rock for the Boston & Montana smelter at this city is quarried.
The dead are:
AUGUST JOHNSON, single, 45 years old, foreman of the blasters.
LARS G. PALMER, single 30 years old.
JOSEPH LOGOTICH, large family in Austria, 42 years old.
JOHN KOMBEL, single, 20 years old.
GEORGE LOGOTICH, believed to be married with family in Austria, 45 years old.
Severely Injured:
FRANK BRUGO had his leg shattered, head bruised and cut and his condition is critical. He has a family in Italy.
It is more than probable that the cause of the accident will never be really known. The men who are dead and injured were engaged in charging blasts preparatory to setting them off. The holes had been prepared beforehand, and had been strung with a charge of blasting powder to make a large cavity at the bottom. They were 24 feet deep, the desire being to blast out a large section of the mountainside and send it down toward the crusher so it could be handled.
JOHNSON and PALMER were making ready the charge. JOSEPH LOGOITCH and KOMBEL were below sending up bags of sand for tamping, and BRUGO and GEORGE LOGOTICH were carrying up powder for the blasts. Some of these had been put in when the explosion occurred, how, nobody knows. When the accident occurred it split tons and tons of rock and hurled the first four named men under it At a late hour their bodies hadnot been recovered. The other two men were a little distance away and were only hit by the flying rock, knocked down and badly cut.
A special train immediately brought them to a hospital here, but GEORGE LOGOTICH died shortly after reaching the city. BRUGO is hardly expected to recover and will certainly lose a leg.
A number of other men were working in the quarry some distance away, and several of them were badly cut and bruised by flying rocks, but none seriously. The only theory advanced as to the cause of the explosion is that a piece of smoldering fuse must have remained from the previous explosion to spring the holes. The only one of the victims of whom anything much is known is JOHNSON, who is said to have a brother in Minneapolis who is a wealthy contractor. The LOGOTICHS, believed to be brothers, were Austrians; PALMER is a Swede, and the other two victims were Italians.